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Murphy is an American cinema school student, living in Paris. He had a French girlfriend, called Electra, whom he dated for two years. One day, Murphy and Electra met and had a no-strings-attached threesome with another woman, a young blonde Danish teenager named Omi, as a way to add some excitement to their love life. But later, Murphy had sex with Omi behind Electra's back, as a result of which Omi became pregnant. This unplanned pregnancy ended the relationship between Murphy and Electra on a horrible note, and it forced Murphy to marry Omi.

On a rainy January morning, Electra's mother, Nora, phones Murphy at his small Paris apartment where he lives with Omi and their 18-month-old son to ask him if he's heard from the young woman, because she hasn't for three months, and given her daughter's suicidal tendencies, she is really worried. For the rest of this day, Murphy recalls his past two years with Electra in a series of fragmented, nonlinear flashbacks; how they first met in Paris, their quick hookup, and their lives over the next two years which is filled with drug abuse, rough sex and tender moments.

In a pre-release interview with Marfa Journal, Gaspar implied that the film will have an explicitly sexual feel: "will give guys a hard-on and make girls cry".[9] The sex scenes were unsimulated and most were not choreographed.[10] There was barely a script and Noé would set up different real-life meetings with the actors.

The film received mixed reviews, with 39% on Rotten Tomatoes, an average rating of 4.9/10, sampled from 85 reviews. The websites consensus states: "Love sees writer-director Gaspar Noé delivering some of his warmest and most personal work; unfortunately, it's also among his most undeveloped and least compelling."[15] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 51 out of 100 based on reviews from 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[16]